Yes, yes, the seventh and final book in the "Potter" series isn't due for another week, but the latest "Potter" movie, the unremittingly bleak and occasionally brilliant "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," is a potent reminder that the Hogwarts kids have come a long way from the carefree days of baby-faced Quidditch matches and spells involving chocolate-flavored frogs. By the time you've worked through all the bad mojo that fills "Phoenix," you can't but believe there's a eulogy in Harry's future. If David Chase can kill off Tony Soprano (and, yes, people, that's what he did), what makes you think that J.
K. Rowling is going to spare Potter, who might to be forced die to vanquish the evil from within and without. "I feel so angry all the time," Harry (Daniel Radcliffe) tells a confidante in "Phoenix.
" "What if I'm becoming bad?" Harry isn't becoming bad - he's just becoming a teen-ager. And in "Phoenix," the fifth entry in Rowling's seven-book series, we see the boy wizard turning into a sometimes sullen, almost always solitary, self-doubting figure.
On the rare occasions that we do see Harry's stalwart friends Hermione (Emma Watson) and Ron (Rupert Grint), they're usually tip-toeing around Potter, almost certain in the knowledge that he wants to be alone with his thoughts. Thoughts and nightmares. Harry is plagued by visions here, constantly seeing the Dark Prince, Lord Voldemort (Ralph Fiennes) in his dreams.
The Ministry refuses to believe Harry's contention that Voldemort has returned and has launched a propaganda campaign against Harry and Hogwarts headmaster Dumbledore (Michael Gambon). The Ministry wants them discredited - and silenced To that end, the Ministry dispatches a new professor to Hogwarts, Dolores Umbridge (Imelda Staunton, the best Potter baddie yet), a self-satisfied, supercilious woman whose frozen, plastic smile masks a fear and loathing of children. This diminutive pink lady seems an unlikely villain until she reveals a steely resolve to abolish any dissenting point of view, even (and especially, given the gleam in her eyes) if that involves physical torture and mental cruelty.
The "Potter" books have always contained plenty of death and dark themes, but "Phoenix" takes the foreboding to a new level. It's also the best and most fully realized "Potter" movie to date (slightly edging Alfonso Cuaron's "Azkaban"). To that end, credit belongs to director David Yates, a BBC vet, who, like "Pride and Prejudice" director Joe Wright, displays an impressive visual style in his leap to big-budget filmmaking.
One look at "Phoenix's" opening scene - two Dementors go after Harry and his cousin in the dull-grey, soul-less suburbs where Potter lives when he comes home from Hogwarts - and you know you're in capable hands. Yates is already onboard for the next movie. (PG-13: sequences of fantasy violence and frightening images.
) Yes, yes, the seventh and final book in the "Potter" series isn't due for another week, but the latest "Potter" movie, the unremittingly bleak and occasionally brilliant "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix," is a potent reminder that the Hogwarts kids have come a long way from the carefree days of baby-faced Quidditch matches and spells involving chocolate-flavored frogs.
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